The spread of sport-cultural elements

Sports are also characterised with diffusion, that is, the spreading mechanisms. Geographically the notion of spreading means that something starting from somewhere and spreads on a given area, territory. (Haggett, P., 2006). The elements of sport-culture originate from somewhere and through different channels they start spreading with various speeds (e.g.: football as an innovation started in England).

In Haggett’s view (2006) spatial spreading has two versions: the expansion and the relocation diffusion. In case of expansion innovations, for example, knowledge and information flow form one place to another area is expanding and the same effect characterises the starting point (e.g.: the centre of basket ball is still in the USA while it has already spread almost everywhere in the world).

The other two ways of expansion diffusion are the epidemic like spreading from one population to another through direct contacts. Within hierarchic diffusion the so called innovations spread from top to bottom and from bottom to top regarding social origins and income status of a region. The former can be exemplified with the Hungarian table tennis starting from the capital, Budapest and spread all over the country. The other example is bowling which has developed into a competitive sport from popular sport games.

We can talk about relocation or dislocation spread (Trócsányi, A., - Tóth, J. 2002) when individuals disseminate some elements of their sport culture in a new place, territory (e.g.: football was established and spread in Latin America by the European settlers).